Seeds law approved in Dominican generates controversy‏

A law approved by the Dominica Republic's Senate last April 30th, the so called "Seeds Law” has generated a lot of controversies in the country. The author of the project is the senator Amícal Romero, who is also vice-president of agrochemical company Ferquido (Dominican Chemical Fertilizers). According to him, the proposal has the goal to protect intellectual property and the rights of those who develop the certified cultivars technology for the field.

The first article of the law declares that the goal is "to promote, improve, control, and protect the production, the storage, the commercialization, and used of seeds in the Dominican Republic". It is also aimed to "foster the use of certified seeds of all crops for national production, for local consumption, and exports".

It yet establishes a "control system of seeds which would guarantee farmers would have access to good quality seeds. It reforms and strengthens the institutional platform of the country towards seeds, creating the National Office of Seeds, as a governing body of the national system of seeds and accounted for designing and implementing the national seed policy".

The president of the Dominican Union of Agribusiness, Osmar Benítez, qualifies the opponents, such as the peasant organizations, of the new law as "seekers of a new cause".

"We have to leave for the record the following: the Dominican Union of Agribusiness understands that the legal framework has to be revised and updated. In this sense, we support the modernization of the law which manages the issue of seeds in the Dominican Republica", affirms the leader.

He sustained that according to the amendment 50 of the constitution, the right of the companies dedicated to certified seeds generation should be respected. "We cannot limit the exercise of a private business", insists Benítez.

Representatives of academic and social organizations, like the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo and the Institute for the Development of Associative Economy, have worries that the law could privatize the use of seed material.

Ecologist Luis Carvajal from the University of Santo Domingo complains that "the approval of similar laws in other countries followed a policy not articulated with the necessities of the countries to adapt to a regime of control of seed material to the requirement of modernity, but a requirement of neoliberal advance and the trend of a monopolized capitalism that would privatize everything", says.

He adds that "a lot of gaps were open to allow the appropriation of the genetic sequence, the properties that are contained at a seed". Carvajal understands that the simple sequence identification or certification cannot be enough for a company to patent a determined gen and receive for its use.